In the USA and English Canada, hyphenated names are often assumed by women who marry. In the UK, and the WASP upper or upper middle classes, hyphenated names are often status symbols to remind people of the high social status of your mother's family.

As shown on the Simpsons (Marge's sister) some wome keep the names of their former husbands as well as the latest idiot.

Some men are now hyphenating their names with their wives' names. In Quebec, a complex set of rules was established to promote gender equality. Women often keep their maiden names while the children may bear hyphenated names.

Judging from my family tree, families in colonial America followed the custom of naming at least some of the children with their Mother's maiden name as a middle name, albeit without a hyphen. In Ireland, apparently, there was a really complicated system of naming children after their uncles, aunts, etc. If you knew this system you could make predictions about one generation's names from the last or the next generation. This presumably makes genealogy and also clan records easier to remember without written records.

Maybe unconnected, but I'm currently reading Ali Soufan's The Black Banners, and it's amazing how well Al Qaeda and other related terrorists respond to simple acts of human kindness...especially from westerners, who they've been told are terrible, evil people.